


Firefly fic:  Five Things that Never Happened to Simon Tam

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, Ensemble - Freeform, Episode Related, Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-14
Updated: 2009-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a series of unfortunate events happen to Simon Tam</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firefly fic:  Five Things that Never Happened to Simon Tam

1.  
Jayne lies unmoving on the infirmary table. Simon has fitted his neck with an immobilizing brace and inserted an IV port into his left arm. In his hand, Simon holds a vial of ethyl chloranimide-R21.

Simon brought this vial with him onto Serenity, sewn into the lining of his vest. He's felt its slight weight against his hip for months now. Sometimes at night, he takes out the tiny ampoule and holds it to the light; the colorless liquid casts prisms on his pale skin.

Simon had bought the R21 as insurance of sorts. The men who sold him the schematics of the Academy had warned him that River might not be "salvageable." He remembers quashing his indignation and swallowing his protests that River is not a thing, not a commodity to be salvaged. Those men urged him to buy the R21 as an untraceable way to "put her down" if River's pain was too great and her rescue impossible. Simon had nodded wordlessly and counted out two stacks of gleaming coin. But this was before he'd seen her, pinned to a chair like a dead butterfly, twitching and moaning in the blue glare of the laboratory. Before Simon knew his resolve didn't include killing his sister.

Rolling the vial between his fingers, Simon catalogues the drug's pharmacological properties. Ethyl chloranimide-R21 causes almost instantaneous brain death and breaks down so quickly that its use is virtually undetectable even to the most sophisticated scanning equipment. Despite its obvious fit for their line of work, assassins have rarely used R21; the chemical is so new and so expensive to make that only a few people have ever died from its effects.

"And now Jayne Cobb will join their ranks," Simon thinks. He empties the vial into a syringe and injects Jayne through the intravenous line. Minutes later, Jayne's respiration slows.

Simon meets Mal on the gangplank. The captain is, surprisingly, naked, but Simon cannot find the innocence to blush.

"Captain, I have some bad news. Jayne suffered a severe concussion while helping Kaylee to recalibrate the garbage disposal unit. He's slipped into a coma, and all his higher brain activity has ceased. I've intubated him for now, but you should know that no patient on record has ever recovered from head trauma this extensive." Simon pauses, and Mal curses softly under his breath. "I know that Jayne and I have not been the best of friends since I came aboard Serenity, but I truly regret his loss—especially after what he did on Ariel for River."

~ ~ ~

2.  
Simon rises from his chair as the housekeeper leads an elegantly dressed woman into the sitting room. "Inara Serra. It's such a pleasure to finally meet you in person." He raises a soft and perfumed hand to his lips.

"The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Tam. Your reputation as a surgeon precedes you. Reports of your success in limb reattachment have even reached moons on the outer Rim."

Simon acknowledges her compliment with a slight inclination of his head and motions her to the settee. Inara sits gracefully, and the fabric of her skirt swirls around her slim legs like something liquid.

"I'm grateful that your busy schedule allowed you to arrange an engagement with me. My superiors at the hospital implied that attending the charity ball alone would constitute a gaffe of the highest order."

Inara laughs; the sound is like warm honey sliding over silk. "As Osiris's most eligible bachelor, I'm surprised that you had difficulty finding a date for the social event of the season."

"Unfortunately, my appointment at Sakura Regional Medical Center leaves little time for social networking."

Inara nods understandingly. She glances around the sitting room, her eyes settling on a large painting that hangs above Simon's rarely played upright piano. The triptych is exquisite; the most technically perfect calligraphy Simon knows Inara has ever seen fills three screens of delicate silk framed in roughly hewn bamboo.

It reads: _Once when Earth was new and green and her bones were strong within her, a girl stood on the banks of the Yellow River. Far behind her and through the trees, she could hear the men of the village readying another raiding party. For as long as the girl could remember, her village had been at war with another. The girl's father had chosen her as an offering to the rival village—a bride the elders said would heal the wounds between the two peoples. Though she longed for an end to the bloodshed, the girl's heart was heavy. She thought, "What am I? Am I an instrument of peace, or a weapon disguised in bridal silks? I am a means to an end, but what end?" She stepped into the water, and as its wetness slowly crept up the heavy material of her robes, she could see the Ancestor spirits beckoning. Their arms stretched out like plumes of curling smoke, and when she reached their damp embrace, the girl's heart lifted. She felt her body curl in on itself and her limbs fuse to her side. She had become a stone, fixed to the riverbed and immovable. Anchored by her weight, the kimono billowed up toward the water's edge, a golden cloud rippling in the river's eddies. This is a myth of Earth-that-was._

"It's lovely, isn't it? My sister painted it years ago. She was quite the artist."

"Was?"

Simon looks at his hands as he speaks. "Yes. She died when she was young, at a boarding school. She sent the painting to me before she fell ill." Simon smiles sadly. "I've always wondered if River knew she would soon die. But, of course, that's ridiculous. She couldn't have predicted an outbreak of Kyson's Fever in the dormitories."

Inara puts her hand on his leg; her fingers are warm and her eyes kind when Simon forces himself to look at her again. He'd thought to keep this arrangement between them platonic, but when Inara leans closer and brushes her lips against his, Simon sighs and tangles his fingers in her dark curls.

 

~ ~ ~

3.  
"I'm sorry." Simon steps back from Kaylee's body. The small square of flesh he'd left uncovered during the bullet extraction is marked with his fingerprints in the dark brown of dried blood. "The damage was too extensive for the equipment available to repair. I did everything possible. I wish that I could have . . ."

Simon stops talking when Jayne unholsters a gun from his thigh and fires it casually into his stomach. Simon reels backward with the impact, his senses startlingly heightened as he falls. From the cold, metal deck where he sprawls, gasping, Simon can see the spray of his own blood speckling Kaylee's pants. He can hear wetness gurgling deep in his chest and, over the shallow rasp of his breath, the crew talking.

"_Wo de ma_, Jayne! Nobody fires a weapon on this boat without my leave, especially not six inches from my gorram face!" The captain sounds less appalled that Jayne has shot Simon and more irritated that he has done so without consulting him first.

"Mal, Kaylee's dead. Kaylee. Even if this _hundan_ didn't pull the trigger, you know he killed her. Whatever he done, whatever the Alliance's got against him, that's why she's dead. He don't deserve to live now, and you know it."

"If you wanted him dead, Jayne, you do realize you aimed a little low?"

"He'll die, Zoe. Just not real quick."

Simon finds their almost flippant treatment of his impending death vaguely comforting as the blood pooling beneath him begins to cool. He thinks that River will fit in nicely with these people who retain their senses of humor even as a man dies clutching his stomach at their feet. He can imagine River up on tiptoes, pointing her finger and criticizing playfully, "Quickly, Jayne. It's quick_ly_."

"Wash, take us out of the world. Jayne, grab the doc's legs."

Simon loses consciousness briefly; when he awakens to the hiss of the airlock opening, he's slumped against the metal stairs in the cargo bay.

"This box his?"

"Yeah, Mal."

"Toss it out with his body."

"You don't wanna open it? Might be worth something."

" 'Course it's worth something, _sagua_. Whatever's in that box is bought in Kaylee's blood."

Simon wants to beg for River's life, but he can barely breathe deeply enough to speak, and, in the end, the black of space rips even that last lungful from him.  
~ ~ ~

4.  
Simon wraps his arms around River and whispers into her ear, "I love you, _mei mei_. _Eta Kooram Nah Smech_." She falls slack against him, and the crowd murmurs suspiciously. Flames have already begun to lick up the base of the pyre. The wood is green and still full of sap; it smolders and pops, sharp retorts loud as gunfire. Simon closes his eyes. He doesn't think that River will wake, but even so, he cannot bear to see her flesh blacken and peel back from the bone.

Just as the soles of Simon's boots begin to melt against his feet, the Patron yanks him down into the cool, dry earth. "Your sister might be a witch, but far as I see, that's none of your doing. And we need a doctor out here a sight more than we need another body to put in the ground."

Simon doesn't speak. He allows a man dressed in overalls to lead him back toward the makeshift hospital. The odor of manure that clings to the man masks the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh behind them.

Simon sits obediently at the wooden table while his captor removes all the surgical implements from the room. Then the man retreats to the door to stand watch—whether over him or the spectacle outside, Simon cannot tell. Through the half-opened door, Simon can still hear the crackle and hiss of the bonfire that has tinged all the bedclothes in the room with a lurid glow. He hears the man mutter, "Never seen one burn so quiet before."

While the man's attention is diverted, Simon surreptitiously lifts a bottle of pain medication from the remaining supplies. He swallows the contents with the water left in River's glass and waits to die. While he waits, Simon eats the last hodgeberries; their juices form stigmata in his palms.

~ ~ ~  
5.  
"Don't look so tetchy, doc. Your face might stick that way." Mal turns around in the pilot's chair of Shuttle Two and grins. "Not like you were my first choice of partner for this run, but Bolles's boys need some patching up, and they threw in three sacks of flour on account of your skill with a needle. So, I'd take it as a kindness if you'd stop looking like you been snacking on persimmons. Just sit back and enjoy the ride." Later, when he and Mal are tied back to back in Niska's torture chamber, a knife slowly popping off the buttons on his shirt, Simon remembers this conversation and wants to laugh.

He cannot recall ever hurting this badly. Several of his teeth are loose in their sockets, and he can just see the purple bloom of bruise that starts on each of his forearms and spirals up to his torso. His fingernails are black and swollen with blood where Niska's henchmen have shoved in small, metallic splinters. Simon again stifles a laugh when he realizes he's concerned about the sterility of the torture equipment. He suspects he's thinking irrationally.

He can hear Mal's voice now and again, but it sounds muffled and far away, as if it has traveled through water. Mal is talking about Kaylee and Simon's obvious lack of virility and other essential manly qualities revealed in his failure to bed her. Simon thinks he responds, but he can't be sure. He's merely grateful that the captain has neglected to mention River thus far in what can only be the oddest example of a death scene soliloquy Simon can imagine. Niska has not mentioned her either, and Simon is again grateful as his bones ache with the deep vibration of an electrical pulse.

At some point after Niska twists his bony fingers in the wound on Simon's shoulder but before he shatters Simon's left femur, Zoe strides into the torture chamber with a drawstring bag full of coin. Niska offers her a choice; she can take either Mal or Simon with her, but not both. Simon has known Zoe long enough to recognize her hesitation. She glances briefly at him with something like regret in her eyes and then chooses Mal. Simon cannot protest; his only objective is to keep River safe, and Mal is more likely to accomplish that goal than he. Simon suspects that his death at Niska's hands will make River a more permanent member of the crew than any other scenario he's considered.

Niska unties Mal, and he stumbles into Zoe's arms. Maybe Mal looks back at Simon as she leads him from the room, but Simon wouldn't know. He's closed his eyes again. When all Simon has heard for ten minutes is his own ragged breath, Niska puts his mouth by his ear and says, "Let us talk about River, shall we?"


End file.
